


Ordinary Town

by Nevanna



Category: X-Men Evolution
Genre: Other, POV Outsider, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2018-12-11 22:09:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11723571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevanna/pseuds/Nevanna
Summary: Amanda Sefton is an ordinary teenager attending Bayville High, where some very strange events are about to take place.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story follows a group of the X-Men's non-mutant classmates through the events of Season One. Amanda appears in several episodes of _Evolution_ , Jason appears in one ("SpykeCam"), and Trish is based on a character from the _X-Men_ comics, although apart from her name and her journalistic ambitions, I more or less constructed her character from the ground up. I will eventually draw on the comics for other supporting characters, as well.
> 
> The title is taken from the song of the same name, by Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer.

A few minutes after I heard the sirens outside my window, my mother knocked on the door. “Amanda, there’s been a fire at the high school stadium.”

I almost knocked over a stack of notes for the history paper I was writing. “Nobody has been badly hurt,” Mom continued in her professionally soothing voice, before I could ask. “Do you want to come downstairs and watch the news with us?”

I spent the next half hour searching the screen for familiar faces. Trish (grouchily), along with her parents (full of school spirit), would have been in the stands, watching her brother Brent on the field. Our friend Jason might have been sitting with them, or he might have been sandwiched between his track teammates. If I hadn’t needed to at least start my essay on the feudal system, I might have been watching the game, too. 

When Trish finally called me later, her voice only wavered once as she told me what happened. “We weren’t anywhere near the explosion, but we saw it go off,” she says. “The medics took Duncan Matthews away in an ambulance and made a few other guys wait before they drove home, and they let everybody else go. The fire was pretty much out by the time we left.”

“I’m glad you’re okay,” I said. “Does anybody know how it happened?”

“I’ll find out on Monday,” she said, and I knew that, in one way or another, it was the truth.

Before I went to bed, I noticed that Mom had set a row of crystals on the window sill.

\--

The day of the football game, most of the teachers had eventually given up on trying to get students to pay attention. Streamers in the school colors had decorated the halls, lunchtime had quickly turned into an unscheduled pep rally, and Mr. Hunter interrupted his lecture on _Macbeth_ twice to hush two of the cheerleaders, who were whispering and giggling loudly enough for the whole room to hear them.

The Monday after the explosion, Brent was quiet as he drove Trish and me to school, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel at traffic lights. The crowd swept him up as soon as we got to campus. 

I ducked two swinging backpacks and wove around a desperately embracing couple to reach Jason’s side. “Amanda!” He flung an arm around me. “Hey, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you would’ve missed me if anything happened.”

“Maybe a little bit,” I teased.

During first period, as Mrs. Greene collected our history papers, the classroom was buzzing with whispered conversation that none of her glares or pointed throat-clearing could chase away. She’d just returned to the front of the room when someone knocked at the door. 

Mrs. Greene opened it and admitted a boy I’d never seen before. He handed her a sheaf of papers, which she studied for a moment, and then raised her voice to address the rest of the room.

“Boys and girls, this is Kurt Wagner. He will be joining our class. Mr. Wagner, please take a seat at the back – you can share Miss Tate’s textbook – and stay after the bell so that we can discuss your work going forward.”

“Thank you,” Kurt Wagner said, and turned to face us. He was short and slight, with a pale, mischievous-looking face and shoulder-length dark hair. “Hello, everybody. I’m very glad to be here.” Once he’d spoken more than two words, his accent was unmistakable, but he didn’t get to say much more than that, because our teacher cleared her throat again, and he moved hastily to his seat. I could have sworn that he smiled at me along the way, and I found myself smiling back.

\--

Trish was eating lunch with the rest of the newspaper staff, so Jason and I shared a table in the courtyard. “What are you reading?” he asked, craning his neck to see my book. “Oh, the Scottish Play.”

“I don’t think it’s bad luck to say the name unless we’re actually in a theater.” I turned the page. Somebody had written in my copy, and I was pretty sure the notes were color-coded.

“Drama Club almost performed that one last fall,” he said, “but we decided to go with _Death of a Salesman_ instead. Less decapitation, but about the same amount of despair.”

I caught a glimpse of Kurt as he carried his tray to a corner table, where two upperclassmen were waiting.

Jason followed my gaze. “You meet the new guy yet? He introduced himself in health class. He’s living with Jean and Scott, up on the hill.”

“You mean he’s living with…”

Jason nodded. “I guess he’s a new foster kid, or something.”

Neither of us had actually _met_ Charles Xavier, but we’d both heard that he was the richest person in town, if not the entire county. He donated the money to rebuild the school library two years ago. As far as I knew, he was some sort of scientist who had lived in England for decades before returning to his family mansion, alone except for the staff… and, more recently, three of my schoolmates. Even if they hadn’t been connected to him, most of the school would probably know who Scott Summers and Jean Grey were, if only because he never took off his sunglasses and she was on more teams and committees than I even knew existed. 

When I was growing up, I heard plenty of stories, at sleepovers or Halloween parties, about the mansion on the hill. I think that, by the time I started high school, I was supposed to recognize that they were only stories.

\--

Just before last period, Trish and I heard Duncan Matthews from halfway down the hallway, braying about the lack of damage to his brain. I glanced at Trish, who shook her head. “I’d make a joke, but it would be too easy,” she said. “Paul wants me to write about the accident for our next issue. I’ve already talked to a couple of the players, but I know where I’m going to look next.”

I closed my locker. “Where?”

“After everything went boom, I saw Tolansky over there, sneaking away from the boom site. He was closer to it than anyone!” She nodded across the hall at a small, hunched-over freshman. Even from where I was standing, I could smell him - it was like an aquarium that hadn’t been cleaned in weeks - but she didn’t let the smell stop her from striding up to him. “You’re Todd, right?”

“Who wants to know?”

She pasted a smile on her face. “I’m Trish Tilby. I was hoping that we could spend a few minutes talking about what happened at the game the other night. It’s for the school paper.”

Todd’s eyes widened. “Look, I don’t know if Summers decided to tattle, or what, but I didn’t…”

“Amanda, could you leave us alone for a couple of minutes?” Trish asked me.

Before I could move, Principal Darkholme was swooping down on us. “Miss Tilby, may I ask what you’re doing?”

Trish scowled and opened her mouth, and I elbowed her in the side. She’s the confrontational one; I’m the one who gets queasy whenever I watch her fighting with her brother, or when my parents shut themselves in their room and start arguing. “We were just talking,” I said. “Ma’am.”

“I’m the one who needs to talk to Mr. Tolansky at the moment.” Ms. Darkholme placed her hands on her hips. “I think that you girls should be in class right now.”

By the time we reached my math classroom, Trish had stopped fuming. “You did hear him say ‘Summers,’ right?” I nodded. “I think I know who I’ll be interviewing next.”

\--

At lunch the next day, I flipped through the notes that I’d made for my _Macbeth_ paper, and tried not to sneak too many glances at the table claimed by Xavier’s foster kids. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I could tell that Jean was trying to be calm and friendly as usual, while Scott looked like he was hoping that something else would explode and blast Trish as far away from him as possible. Kurt was too distracted by his burger to join the conversation.

“Turns out that Summers and Tolansky got into a fight with some of the football goons, just before the explosion,” Trish said once she returned to our table. “He wouldn’t give me a quote, but Jean did.” She held up her notepad. “And I learned a little more about the Xavier Institute.”

“Wait, it’s an institute now?” That was the first time I’d heard the house on the hill called that. “Fancy.”

“Yep. The Xavier Institute for GIfted Children. It’s still a pretty new operation, I guess, which is why there are so few kids living there.”

Then, they weren’t foster children, but participants in some kind of live-in extracurricular club. “So, Kurt… and those others,” I added hastily. “They just study really advanced subjects?”

“I guess.” She gave me her familiar speculative look. “We could always _ask_ what they do up there. If they’re anything like the gifted program back in junior high, we won’t be able to shut them up.”

“Did you ask if the house was haunted?”

She grinned. “You still believe that, don’t you?”

I shrugged and took a sip of my juice. “People have believed in weirder things.” The conversation about the Xavier Institute ended there… at least, for the moment.


	2. Chapter 2

When we were younger, Trish and I used to trick-or-treat together: as fairies, as biker chicks, as aliens. On the Halloween of our sophomore year, with our trick-or-treating days sadly behind us and no parties to attend, we walked down the chilly, wood-smoke-scented streets to the video store. 

When we left my house, the sky was clear, with a sliver of moon and a brilliant scattering of stars. The rain came down as we were walking back: not with a few warning spatters, but all at once, like some giant hand in the sky had decided to overturn a bucket of water on the entire neighborhood. I shrieked and pulled my jacket over my head, and we ran for home, but as soon as we turned the corner onto Kirkland Street, the downpour stopped as quickly as it had begun, and the sky cleared again.

Trish tugged at the sopping neckline of her sweater. “Well, this is a hell of a way to start the evening.”

Dad greeted us when we walked into the living room, trying not to drip all over the carpet. “What happened to you two?” he asked.

“A whole lot of rain,” Trish said through clenched teeth.

“I guess it’s our fault for not bringing an umbrella.” Unexpected downpours used to happen at least once a week, but they were a lot less common than they used to be. 

We changed into our pajamas, threw our clothes into the dryer, and curled up on the couch with a bowl of popcorn between us. Toward the end of _The Craft_ , Trish asked, “I wonder what our folks would think if we started practicing witchcraft? I mean, I know how _mine_ would react, but what about yours?” 

“I think my mom would be okay with it.” I was thinking about the crystals that Mom had set up on the windowsill the night of the explosion.

“Okay with what?” Mom asked from the doorway.

“Nothing,” I said, at the same time that Trish said, “Witchcraft.”

Mom raised an eyebrow. “In general? Or as a life choice?”

“A _hypothetical_ life choice,” I said. 

“Well, I suppose that I’d accept it, but I would tell you to be very careful.” She nodded at the screen. “I like to think that some people would recognize the possible consequences of their actions before they harmed a classmate or ended up in an institution.”

“I promise that I won’t try to channel the dark forces without talking to you first,” I assured her.

“I know that I raised you right, then.”

“Ready for _The Shining_?” Trish asked. 

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I said. “Bring on the haunted hallways.”

Later, on my way back from the bathroom, I heard my parents’ voices from downstairs. “...that she should be careful,” Mom was saying. “Why? What would you suggest that I tell her?”

“What did you tell her when she was six and thought that she could talk to animals?”

“Do you think that this is the same?”

Dad sounded tired. “I think what I’ve always thought: that you should be the one to decide.”

Trish poked her head around the doorframe. “You okay? See any creepy twins out there?”

I shook my head.

“Have I mentioned lately that your mom is seriously cool?” Trish asked, unrolling her sleeping bag. “If I told my folks that I was a witch, I’d be _lucky_ if all they said was that I was _looking for attention_.” It was one of her parents’ favorite phrases. “And Brent would probably make some crack about girls dancing naked in the woods.”

“Mom’s always been a believer,” I said. “And I guess she’s worked with enough patients who got in trouble when they had to tell their parents that they were, you know, _different_.”

“See? You can actually have conversations with her. You have no idea how lucky you are.”

“I’ve heard my share of horror stories,” I reminded her. They hadn’t been about creepy twin ghosts in hallways, either. “Believe me, I know.”

\--

After several people who lived and worked on Main Street reported their cars overturned and their windows smashed, Trish started taking quotes from our classmates for an article that she planned to call, “How Safe Is Our School?” I saw her waving her notebook in our classmates’ faces (and also saw one of the new kids, Evan Daniels, immediately take off in the opposite direction on his skateboard), but I didn’t actually hear one of her interviews until she cornered Kurt Wagner by his locker after the last bell.

“I was hoping to get your perspective on some of the recent safety issues here in Bayville,” she said.

Kurt looked startled. “I’ll try, but I’m not sure if…”

“Excellent.” Trish beamed. “What do you think of the explosion in the football stadium earlier this year?”

Kurt seemed to pull himself together. “That was shortly before I came to town, but I know that it was a horrible accident, and we were very lucky that nobody was hurt.”

Trish leaned closer. “I’m going to give you a list of potential threats. I want you to rank them in order of how much you feel that you’re at risk. One: violence perpetrated by other students. Two: violence perpetrated by intruders. Three: naturally occurring accidents. Four: Abuse of power by authority figures…”

“Is the tuna casserole in the cafeteria going to be on this list?” Kurt interrupted. “I definitely feel threatened when I see it on the menu.”

I smiled at that. Trish raised an eyebrow. “That can be a write-in,” she told Kurt. “What about…”

“Miss Tilby!” The principal leaned over Trish’s shoulder. “We talked about this, didn’t we?”

“About what, ma’am?” Trish asked innocently. “About my right to freedom of the press?”

“I’m very impressed with your knowledge of civics, young lady, but you’re under some very elaborate delusions about how this school works. Follow me to my office. Now.”

“Ms. Darkholme, she wasn’t doing anything wrong,” Kurt protested.

If looks could kill, Kurt would have been on the floor in an instant. “Believe me, Mr. Wagner: you would be wise to stay out of this.” She clicked away in the direction of her office, and Trish cast us one last backward glance as she followed.

Kurt and I glanced at each other, and I’m not sure which one of us felt more awkward. “Thanks for trying to bail her out,” I said.

“You are welcome. I am told that the principal is like that with everybody.” He gave me a tiny smile. “I hope that your friend is all right.”

“Me, too.” Mostly, I hoped that Trish wouldn’t say anything to dig herself even deeper.

While I was waiting for her - after telling Brent that we’d take the late bus - two of the guys who sat at the corner table in the cafeteria - the one that most people avoided - joined me in the outer office. “So, what’d you do?” asked the larger of the two. His name was Fred, and he was rumored to have started one of the most epic food fights that the school had ever seen.

I blinked. “Me? Nothing. I’m waiting for a friend.”

“Must be nice to have friends,” he remarked.

The other boy was smaller and leaner, with white-bleached hair and constantly fidgeting legs. “Stop talking, Fred. You’re embarrassing us both.” He drummed his fingers on the chair, so rapidly that they became a blur. “What’s taking Darkholme so long?”

Fred looked confused. “Pietro, it’s only been two minutes.”

“Like I said.”

“I dunno why you even want her to hurry up. It’s not like she ever calls us in to say that she’s _proud_ of us or nothing.”

“Maybe that’s how things rolled when it was just you and Toad and Lancey-Boy, but things are going to be different now that I’m here.”

“Yeah.” Even I could read the sarcasm in Fred’s ponderous voice. “Can’t wait.” I couldn’t help giggling at that, and he glared. “You laughing at me?”

The door to Ms. Darkholme’s inner office opened before I could answer. Trish stepped out, a scowl stamped on her face. “Guess you guys are up,” she told Fred and Pietro. “Amanda, let’s go.”

“What’d she say to you?” I asked once we were back in the hallway.

“That I’m _stirring up unnecessary anxiety_ and _casting the school in a bad light_.” Trish clenched her fists. “I’m sorry, I thought that I was running a school newspaper, not a propaganda leaflet for a police state!” 

“Well, you’re not stirring up anxiety if people are actually anxious.” I liked her current idea a whole lot better than her fishing for a confession from Todd after the football game. “So, did you know those two guys?”

“I know who they are. Fred Dukes and Pietro Maximoff.”

“They’re new this year, right?”

“Yep,” Trish said. “Maximoff’s on the basketball team, and he’s merely an arrogant little jerk.”

“As opposed to what?”

“Dukes might seem harmless when you first meet him, but…” She shook her head. “I hear that he takes rejection _very_ badly. Why do you think ‘violence from other students’ was the first thing on my list?” Her voice darkened again. “If Darkholme wants ‘school spirit’ she should ask the cheerleaders. I’ll be too busy telling the _truth_ about what’s happening in our school!”


	3. Chapter 3

The rainstorm had been a surprise, but at least rain in upstate New York, in autumn, wasn’t exactly out of the ordinary. The vandalism on Main Street was never traced back to anyone that I knew of, but it wasn’t repeated, either.

I don’t think that anybody could have predicted the earthquake.

Or, at least, that’s what everybody thought it was, at first. I felt it when I was sitting in history class on an ordinary Friday. One minute I was taking notes on the War of the Roses; the next, my desk and chair trembled like a subway train had roared underneath it. Books slid off the shelves, and a globe toppled to the floor. Someone cried out, “Are we being attacked?”

“Is it a bomb?”

“Should we get under our desks?”

 _A bomb?_ I thought back to what Trish had said about “violence from other students.” When I looked over at Kurt’s seat, it was empty.

The loudspeaker crackled to life. Ms. Darkholme was ordering us to evacuate quietly and calmly. As Mrs. Greene led us out into the hallway, we managed to be quiet, but I don’t think that any of us were calm. The whispers started again as we stood on the quad, shivering, and the teachers didn’t even try to stop them.

After an hour, the principal informed us that we were in no danger, that an investigation into the mysterious tremors would soon be underway, and that students should try to continue with our days as normal. By the end of the day, the official explanation had gone out: that a supposedly defunct engineering project in the basement had exploded and caused the tremors. I knew that Ms. Darkholme wanted us to accept it and move on. 

\--

“You do know what happened in that basement, right?” Trish asked as we settled into our seats at the Wired Lizard, which she’d declared the only good coffee shop in Bayville or any of the surrounding towns. Each table was decorated differently; the surface of ours looked like someone had splattered it with drops of green and yellow paint. “Years ago, I mean. Not yesterday.”

“I know that a student disappeared, back in the seventies.” 

Trish nodded. “He went to do some work in the engineering lab and never came out. Some people say…”

“...That they’ve seen his ghost floating around the boiler room,” I finished. “We both heard the same stories at summer camp.” 

“The lab’s been closed off ever since.” She pulled out her notebook. “There’s something else, too.”

“Ectoplasm?” I guessed.

“Sorry to disappoint. But, I asked around, and at least three of the Xavier Institute kids were missing when the quake started. You have a class with one of them, right? Was he in school yesterday?”

“Yeah…” It would have been hard to miss Kurt dancing on the table at lunch. “He wasn’t in class when it happened, though. Maybe they left early for some kind of group activity?”

“Maybe,” she agreed, but I could tell that she didn’t entirely believe it. 

\--

“So, what do you think about what happened last Friday?” I asked Kitty Pryde as we cleaned up our stations after chemistry class. Kitty was a freshman, but she took higher-level science courses. She’d also joined the Xavier Institute shortly after Kurt arrived. And Trish wasn’t the only one who was curious about that place. 

“You mean, like, the earthquake, or whatever it was?” Kitty rolled her eyes. “Do not even get me started.” 

Kurt greeted her outside the door to the classroom. “Scott’s waiting for us. We have a…” He glanced at me. “Study session. Right after school.”

“Oh, yeah.” Kitty grinned. “How could I possibly have forgotten?”

“I have no idea.”

“He only mentioned it twice on the ride over this morning.”

“And once at lunch,” Kurt added.

“Right after Rogue tried to sit with us. What was _up_ with that?”

“Maybe she’ll change her mind about joining us at the Institute. She could be getting tired of…”

“...Lance and his creepy friends?” Kitty made a disgusted noise. “Like, who could blame her?”

“If Scott wants to tell us, he will. Let’s not keep him waiting.” To me, Kurt added, “I will see you in class tomorrow,” and he and Kitty took off down the hallway.

I watched them leave. At least Kurt had remembered that we had a class together. Next time, I might even get as far as reminding him of my name.

\--

In study hall on Monday, I offered, “I could ask Kurt where he and his friends were during the explosion.” I felt my lips curving into a smile as I spoke.

Beside me, Trish looked up from the old yearbook that she was studying. It was open to two side-by-side pictures of a Native American boy about our age: the kid who’d disappeared in the underground lab. “Oh,” she said, her eyebrows arching upward. “I see how it is.”

Instead of looking at either of my friends, I stared at the “In Memoriam” pictures of the missing student. One of them was his school headshot; in the other, he was wearing some kind of metal gauntlet on one arm and posed next to what looked like a B-movie robot on wheels. “Was I that obvious?” I asked.

“You could have been a little bit subtler,” Jason remarked.

“Maybe the next time you want to hide your crush,” Trish suggested, “don’t carry around a magazine with a ‘How To Get Guys To Notice You’ cover story.”

I’d hidden the magazine under my notebook when I saw Trish walk into the library, but apparently I hadn’t been quick enough. “So, do you guys know someone named Rogue?” I asked quickly, groping wildly for a change of subject.

Jason nodded. “She’s in my English class. She nailed her part in _Henry V_ when we had to do dramatic readings. I hope she tries out for the spring musical.”

“If she ends up moving in with Xavier’s kids, she’ll probably be too busy learning… whatever they learn up there.” I giggled. “Maybe it’s a secret magic school, like Hogwarts.”

“That’s your guess?” Jason shook his head. “Why am I not surprised?”

I nudged back, knowing that he was right. I was the one who used to wish on stars and believe that lightning bugs were fairies, and shivered at the ghost stories no matter how many times I heard them.

“Especially when there’s another explanation,” Trish said suddenly. “No magic required.”

“Like what?” I asked.

She wasn’t smiling. “Like some kind of cult,” she said, just as the bell rang. Jason might be the one committed to the drama club, but I had to give Trish credit for her own dramatic timing.


	4. Chapter 4

“What do you know about cults?” I asked Mom, after I finished setting the table. Dad was working late to meet a project deadline at BayTech, so it was our night to get dinner ready.

She’d been ladling vegetable stew from the slow cooker, and my question almost made her miss the bowl. “What brought this on?”

“Trish has gotten pretty interested in them lately.” 

“Last year it was pirate ships, right?” Mom asked. “You don’t think she’s likely to join one, do you?” 

“A cult, or a pirate crew?” I grinned. “I’m not sure I want to meet the cult leader who thinks he can mind-control Trish.”

“Or _she_ ,” Mom reminded me. She wasn’t smiling. “Amanda, one of the things you need to remember about those kinds of groups is that they can seduce even the people who think that they know better.”

\--

“I told Paul that I want to write an article on alternative education,” Trish said the next morning, “and we agreed that I should interview some of Xavier’s kids. I think he’s as curious as I am.”

“If you’re going to talk to them,” I said, shutting my locker, “today’s a good day to do it. I don’t think Ms. Darkholme’s even here.”

Trish snorted. “I’m not scared of her.”

“I think you’re the only one in the school who isn’t.” Jason hoisted his spelunking gear over his shoulder. “Gimme a smelly underground cave any day.”

“Have fun on the field trip,” I said. “Say hi to the Morlocks for me.” _The Time Machine_ had been on our reading list last summer, and Mr. Hunter had taken points from anybody who’d based their book reports on any of the movies.

Jason gave us a salute and hurried down the hall. By the time he reached the door, he was flanked by two girls from the geology club. Trish and I rolled our eyes at each other: she had only slightly more patience for our classmates who fawned over Jason (probably since I used to do it, too) than for the ones who fawned over the jocks like Duncan and Brent.

“I looked him up on the Internet,” Trish told me. “Xavier, I mean. He studied genetics at Oxford, taught at a couple of universities here in the States, published in a bunch of scientific journals that I couldn’t access, not that I would’ve understood them if I had...” 

“Maybe he runs a _science_ cult,” I teased. “Like Scientology.”

“Okay, you know that’s not what Scientology is actually about, right?” she asked as the bell rang.

I hadn’t. Clearly, I had a few things to learn about my friend’s latest obsession.

—

The conversation continued online later that night, while sleet poured outside my window. I was reading the latest posts on a _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ message board while Trish and I talked, and I couldn’t resist suggesting that the Institute was less Hogwarts and more Hellmouth. I was skimming another argument about the identity of the next season’s villain when my screen pinged with her reply: _When people start reporting vampires and werewolves, I’ll believe it._

 _Or maybe they’re exactly what they say they are,_ I typed. _Don’t most cults try to pull people in? They haven’t tried to recruit anybody on campus, have they?_

_They’re recruiting from SOMEWHERE,_ Trish replied. _I want to know how and why._

A new chat window popped up. Apparently, Jason had a more exciting field trip than any of us had predicted. The bus had almost run off the road during the snowstorm, and the class had ridden snowmobiles to a nearby cave. And then Scott Summers and Rogue had wandered away from the group and never came back.

_Does anyone know what happened to them?_ I asked.

_Scott was injured and taken away for medical attention,_ was Jason’s response. _Rogue is a loyal friend, so she went with him._ Before I could start typing, his next message popped up: _First the football game, now this._

_Do you need to start wearing body armor to school events?_ I asked. 

Jason’s reply was surrounded by a string of “grin” emoticons. _If I don’t survive the next one, you and Trish can split my CD collection, OK?_

\--

The next day, when Rogue tried to join Kurt and his friends at their lunch table, Todd Tolansky and _his_ friends blocked her way. She folded her arms and arranged her face to look more bored than I thought was humanly possible. I couldn’t hear what any of them were saying, but when Fred closed a meaty hand around her shoulder, Jason rose from his seat, fists clenched. I grabbed his sleeve and yanked him back down. “What are you doing?” I hissed.

“Those guys are bad news. I should…”

“One of them has _wrists_ bigger than you!” I pointed out. “He’d flatten you into a very chivalrous pancake!”

It turned out that Jason didn’t need to make another move. Rogue lifted one hand and pulled off her glove, and the boys backed away. Before she sat down, she glanced over her shoulder at Jason, and he flashed her a grin.

“Looks like you’ve got yourself yet another admirer,” Trish remarked.

“Well, if she tries to run me off the road in a snowmobile race like she did to Scott, then I’ll know for sure.” 

“Are you covering the geology trip accident?” I asked Trish.

“Nope. Paul’s got that one.”

And, sure enough, when I arrived at the second-floor science lab a couple of minutes early, Paul was hanging around the geology teacher’s desk with his notebook in hand. “So what happened after that?” he asked, leaning forward. “Is Scott okay?”

“Scott was injured and taken away for medical attention,” said Mr. R. “Rogue is a loyal friend, so she went with him.” Outside, a brutal wind had picked up and was tapping the tree branches against the window. I shivered. “The rest of us waited out the storm together.”

\--

I spent the afternoon at the public library, trudging through research for a health class report. While I was looking up statistics, the boy at the next computer started laughing. “Sorry,” he said when I looked over at him. He was about my age, his thick black hair was a mess from the wind, and he hadn’t taken off his coat even though the heat was running full-blast. “This Internet’s pretty groovy, but I can’t believe what some people use it for.”

I finished taking my notes and collecting my links, but before I stopped at the circulation desk to collect my interlibrary loans - including Francesca Lia Block’s new book of fairy tale retellings - I took a detour to find the section on religious cults.

On my way out, my computer neighbor opened the door for me and my overstuffed backpack. “Thanks,” I told him. “I swear, I only came in here for two books.”

“As my friend would say, chivalry isn’t dead,” he said cheerfully, and I smiled, thinking that Jason would agree. “Some things, you can’t learn from an Internet.” The longer we stood there, the more convinced I was that I had seen him somewhere else before, but I was sure that he wasn’t a classmate. He peered closer. “What’s wrong?” 

“I thought I heard…” I could have sworn that something in his right sleeve was _humming_ , which tickled my memory again, but before I could figure out whether I was imagining it, Dad honked from the curb, and I raced down to meet him.

The snow started to fall as we turned off of Main Street. Colored lights glimmered through the swirling flakes. “I think the Matthews’ Christmas display gets bigger every year,” I observed, pressing my nose to the window.

“That reminds me,” he said. “Your mom’s got a conference the same weekend as the BayTech holiday party. You want to come with me, spend the evening with a bunch of geeks talking about our pet machines?” He must have turned toward me at the stoplight, but I was staring straight ahead into the gloom. “You okay, hon? You look like you just saw…”

The last time I saw the boy from the library, he’d been posing with his own pet machine in a photo from thirty years ago. “A ghost,” I said softly.


End file.
